Child Care and Young Children’s Development Research Issues: Children are not randomly assigned to child care or parental care Families who place children in child care are likely to be different from families who do not If differences are found between children in child care and those in parental care, cannot be sure that differences are due to child care

Also, for those children in child care there are different features of care that may influence children’s development: Age of entry (How old when placed in child care?) Quantity of care (How many hours/week?) Quality of care (e.g., caregiver-child ratio; physical environment/materials; caregiver sensitivity/responsiveness) Type of care (e.g., center, family day care, nanny)

These features of care are related to other potential “third” variables Ex: Families with higher incomes and more education tend to place children in higher quality care

When features of care are related to children’s development, cannot infer a cause-and-effect relationship Ex: Higher quality child care relates to more positive child development Is it because of the quality of child care or because families who select high quality child care are likely to be different from families that don’t? Ex: Families who select high quality child care are likely to have higher incomes and more education than those who select lower quality child care Parents’ socioeconomic status is related to children’s development

Partial Solution: Account for as many “third” variables as possible in your research design

NICHD Study of Early Child Care: 1,300 families in multiple locations across the US Children followed from birth to pre-adolescence (so far) Measurement of different features of child care Measurement of many family and child factors that may be third variables

Attachment Security Some earlier research suggested that infants in child care for 20+ hours per week were more likely to be insecurely attached (especially insecure-avoidant) More recent, better designed studies indicate that child care does not increase the likelihood of insecure attachments in infants or young children

NICHD Study: Infants were more likely to be insecurely attached at 15 months only if: Child care arrangements changed frequently, child care quality was low, or children spent more hours in care AND Mothers were not very sensitive to their children

Cognitive/Language Development NICHD Study: Children in parental care and children in child care did not differ in cognitive or language development across the first 4.5 years of life Within the group of children in child care, higher quality care was related to better language skills and pre-academic skills at 4.5 years

Socioemotional Development NICHD Study: More time in child care over the first 4.5 years of life was related to Lower social competence (rated by teachers, mothers) at 4.5 years More behavior problems such as aggression, disobedience, and inattention at 4.5 years and in kindergarten (rated by child care providers, mothers, and/or teachers) More adult-child conflict at 4.5 years and in kindergarten (rated by child care providers and teachers)

Important Qualifications: The correlations between quantity of care and children’s negative outcomes were not strong Quality of care was also related to children’s outcomes (better quality related to better adjustment) Maternal sensitivity was more strongly related to children’s outcomes than quantity of care

Only a small proportion of children in the sample scored in the “at-risk” range for behavior problems, even if they spent a lot of time in child care over the first 4.5 years of life